Friday the 13th has stayed buried for 17 years. There are adults now who’ve never seen a Jason movie in theaters, and, luckily, the hornet’s nest is starting to stir thanks to Crystal Lake, the prequel to the saga that explores how Pamela Voorhees went completely bonkers after the (more or less) accidental death of her son. But Halloween is coming, and you probably won’t want to settle for just a series, so I invite you to grab your machete and come along for a trip to camp, because we’re going to have a grand old time among guts hanging loose and heads detached from bodies: Put together the best Friday the 13th marathon with all the films in the saga ranked from worst to best!
12-Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning
Back in 1984, the people behind the franchise decided to kill Jason off once and for all, seeing that the box office was going down. But of course, the promise of a final chapter pushed the profits back up and they found themselves “forced” to make this fifth installment, in which, instead of Jason, the killer was just some guy in a hockey mask who happened to be around. Luckily there were more movies afterward and it didn’t all end with this anticlimactic and regrettable finale.
11-Friday the 13th, Part IX, the Final: Jason Goes to Hell
I admit that, when I was little, I was a huge fan of this ninth Friday the 13th installment. How could I not be, when in its final moments Freddy Krueger’s claws came out of the ground to drag Jason’s mask off to the confines of the underworld? Sadly, the rest of the movie is bland stuff, where Jason’s spirit keeps moving from person to person and we only get to see the killer himself in a couple of scenes. It almost killed the franchise forever, and for good reason.
10-Friday the 13th, Part VII: New Blood
At first, Jason was going to face Carrie herself, but Stephen King didn’t give permission for such an aberration and they turned the character into another teenage girl with psychic powers who manages to resurrect the killer from the bottom of the sea so he can continue his work. It’s light-years away from the best moments of the saga, but that final battle between body and mind is still fun. For Crystal Lake devotees.
9-Friday the 13th, Part III
If you saw this movie when it came out, you’d have enjoyed the gory 3D it offered, but seen now it’s a little ridiculous, with knives coming toward the camera and absurd visual tricks all over the place. The best thing is that Jason gets his hockey mask and finally creates a horror-movie icon, but he does it in a pretty boring movie with nothing new to add to the saga. Any of the ideas they had before writing the script was better than what we got in the end.
8-Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Jason Returns… Forever
This may be controversial, but the 20 minutes of Jason lost in New York stabbing everything within reach are so fun that they make up for the rest of the movie on a boat where there are one or two stylish kills but not much originality. It’s a shame, because if you listen to the director and the screenwriter, their ideas were brilliant… but they weren’t allowed to soar. The producers wanted to cut the budget and stick with the same old thing, and that’s what they got. Oof.
7-Friday the 13th (2009)
After waiting 8 years for a new Friday the 13th installment, suddenly it arrived… its remake. Marcus Nispel put the first three parts together in a cleaned-up version of the saga that some enjoyed while others, lovers of B-movies, watched without really knowing how to feel: yes, technically it was better than most of the saga’s sequels, but it lacked the usual fun of a proper slasher. Very well shot, very entertaining, but not much slice-and-dice.
6-Jason X
The ninth installment blew Jason up and sent him straight to hell, so… how the hell were they going to bring him back? Well, in this tenth part they decided the best idea was to take him to a futuristic spaceship to hunt down its crew. Tremendous fun, camp, absurd, gory and very stupid: I know fans don’t usually place it this high, but I can’t help but enjoy the mere idea of the killer leaving his camp to go on a machete rampage in Alien.
5-Freddy vs Jason
The movie’s title is better than the movie itself, but it’s hard not to enjoy the fight scenes between the two killers, each one battling with his best weapons. Besides, this was the last time Robert Englund played Freddy Krueger, and you can tell he’s having the time of his life. I wish the story were better and it had gotten that sequel against Ash (from Evil Dead) that the comics did get, but I guess you can’t have everything.
4-Friday the 13th, Part II
With the mother dead, the son stepped in. Jason Voorhees’s first appearance in the franchise (beyond the last minutes of Friday the 13th) takes itself too seriously, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. With a burlap sack over his head, the killer laid the groundwork for the franchise when the people behind it still believed in it as something more than a sack of teenage blood. Better than decent.
3-Friday the 13th
Yes, I know, it’s sacrilege not to put it first, but what can I say: it’s a pop-culture classic, a slasher marvel, a very entertaining movie and it has a final twist for the history books, but, despite all that, Mrs. Voorhees’s murderous urge isn’t as good as the two movies at the top of this ranking. And that’s less a knock on the 1980 classic than praise for the other two.
2-Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives
I firmly believe the Friday the 13th saga lacks humor. As much fun as we have watching the impalements, machete blows, dismemberments and slit-open guts they constantly show us, the truth is there are barely any jokes or visual humor… except in part 6, which for some reason understood that if we were watching these sequels it wasn’t to root for the “final girl” but to watch a ruthless killer become more and more ruthless to absurd extremes. Hilarious, incredible, mandatory viewing.
1-Friday the 13th, Part IV: The Final Chapter
The closest the Friday the 13th sequels have come to a real movie. Firmly believing this was the end of the saga, they did something totally unheard of: a good movie. One of the best slashers in history, with characters who were much more than a sack of blood with legs. If you only have to watch one sequel, don’t hesitate: make it this one. And then, if you want, we can move on to the rest to the sound of ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah.
